Do you want to hear insights from one of the most innovative banks in Singapore? In this episode, Evy Theunis, the Head of Digital Assets, Institutional Banking Group at DBS Bank explains to Chengyi Ong (Head of Policy (APAC), Chainalysis) about the thriving presence of digital asset firms running their businesses out of Singapore and how DBS Bank has been a leader in the revolution of traditional institutions exploring digital asset financial products.
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Public Key Episode 169: Regulatory Clarity & Innovation: A Deep Dive into Singapore’s Crypto Landscape
Do you want to hear insights from one of the most innovative banks in Singapore? In this episode, Evy Theunis, the Head of Digital Assets, Institutional Banking Group at DBS Bank explains to Chengyi Ong (Head of Policy (APAC), Chainalysis) about the thriving presence of digital asset firms running their businesses out of Singapore
Evy also shares how DBS bank has made groundbreaking strides in digital assets including many strategic initiatives such as launching their own digital asset exchange, while emphasizing the importance of regulatory frameworks and technological advancement as pivotal factors in DBS’s foray into digital assets.
Evy and Chengyi also marvel over the evolution and maturity of the digital assets sector and dissect DBS Bank’s top-down approach to crypto trading, digital payments and the tokenization of traditional financial markets.
Quote of the episode
” The MAS (Monetary Authority of Singapore) in Singapore was very early, right, in putting out its first regulation. So there’s definitely a lot of knowledge and experience within Singapore regulator around digital assets… They’ve also have been very collaborative with the industry through consultation papers, to dialogue, to listen and be open to feedback and adjust where they felt was needed after hearing the industry out and reviewing what can be done.” – Evy Theunis (Head of Digital Assets, Institutional Banking Group, DBS Bank)
Minute-by-minute episode breakdown
2 | Evy’s Journey to DBS and Digital Assets
5 | Challenges and Opportunities in Digital Assets for a Bank
9 | DBS’s Focus on Digital Assets Strategy
11 | DBS’s Innovation and Role in Digital Asset Financial Products
15 | Key Components for Future Financial Infrastructure
19 | Increase Demand for Digital Assets by High Net Worth Customers
22 | Singapore as a Hub for Crypto Businesses and Regional Expansion
24 | The Monetary Authority of Singapore and Their Digital Asset Impact
27 | DBS’s Future in Digital Assets
Related resources
Check out more resources provided by Chainalysis that perfectly complement this episode of the Public Key.
- Website: DBS Treasures: Asia’s Global Wealth Gateway
- Article: DBS Treasures: Trade crypto seamlessly on digibank
- Announcement: DBS Digital Exchange: Access fully integrated platform to tokenise, trade and custody of digital assets
- Article: MAS Clarifies Regulatory Regime for Digital Token Service Providers
- Blog: The President’s Working Group (PWG) Report on Digital Asset Markets Makes One Thing Clear: We Will Build The Future of Crypto Together
- Blog: Chainalysis POV: What the GENIUS and CLARITY Act Bills Really Mean for Crypto Compliance
- Blog: Following the Bitcoin Trail: The IntelBroker Takedown
- YouTube: Chainalysis YouTube page
- Twitter: Chainalysis Twitter: Building trust in blockchain
Speakers on today’s episode
- Chengyi Ong (Head of Policy (APAC), Chainalysis)
- Evy Theunis (Head of Digital Assets, Institutional Banking Group, DBS Bank)
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Transcript
Chengyi
Hello and welcome to another episode of public key. I’m your host. Chengyi Ong, head of APAC public policy at Chainalysis. And I am very excited to be joined today by Evy Theunis, head of digital assets in the institutional banking group at DBS Bank, which is headquartered in Singapore and is a leading financial services group in Asia. Hello, Evy, welcome and thank you for taking the time to sit down with me today.
Evy
Thank you for having me. I’m very excited to speak to you about what we’ve been doing here for the last couple of
Chengyi
years. That’s great. Now, Evy, I’m Singaporean, so I grew up with a DBS POSB bank account. But for the rest of our global audience, do you want to start by telling us a little bit
Evy
about DBS. DBS is Southeast Asia’s largest bank. We are over 100 billion US dollars in market cap right now. Very proud of that. We’ve recently been nominated best bank in the world, again by your own money, but we’re also the seventh most profitable bank in the world. We’re the safest bank in Asia for 16 years in a row, and we have about six, 50 billion US in assets, definitely not small. Our main offices are in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, Indonesia and China. And then we have rep offices around the world. So very established bank here in Southeast Asia.
Chengyi
And what about you? How did you end up in a Southeast Asian bank, in dBs, in digital assets in Singapore.
Evy
Well, I came to Singapore 12 years ago. I’ve been with DBS 10 years this year, so not a small period of time, and I came to build their digital capabilities for wealth. That’s how I started. And after that, I continued to work in a Consumer Bank for seven years, and through a rotation program in the bank, because the bank is quite focused on bench strength and building internal bench strength, I got to head digital assets for the institutional bank. I basically got told, let us see what you can do with that. And that’s how I started in 2022 very excited to do it. It was a lot of it gave me a lot of learning opportunities and filled a lot of the areas in my CV that needed strengthening, on the legal and compliance side, on the credit side, on the owning of your PNL side. So a lot of interesting areas to look at. And was very excited about it. But as I said, it was in 2022 so my first week was the started, the first of November 2022 which was the week that FTX fell, which was quite interesting to start, but I think it’s been great. It’s been absolutely fantastic the last almost three years.
Chengyi
Yeah, head of digital assets in 2022 not like they threw you in the deep end or anything. I
Evy
must admit that at the very beginning I thought, Oh my God, what did I do?
Chengyi
What did I give up? But
Evy
I think for the better. It’s been super interesting. I really enjoy it. I studied computer science myself, and obviously I love finance, so I think digital assets was really bringing that all together. And one of my team members said it’s your iki guy that you found. And I think that’s true. I really enjoyed it. And then at the same time, I’m quite a curious person. And the world of crypto and a world of digital assets really questions a lot of the aspects that we’ve come to assume are as they always are, but we don’t really question anymore. And digital assets really questions a lot of the things that happen today in finance. So I find that extremely interesting, too. So overall, it was a very good move.
Chengyi
Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s such an interesting industry, right? Like it grows at such a fast pace. There’s so much turbulence even between 2022 and now it’s only been three years, which would not be, I think, an exceptionally long time in traditional finance. But they do say crypto is like dog years. So you’ve been in here for, you know, whatever it is, 1516, years in real time now. So I want to talk about dBs, of course, and its work in digital assets. I want to hear a little bit more about that time going through, you know, November 2022, and beyond. But let’s take things one by one. So let’s start with DBS. Now you told us a bit about the bank, seventh most profitable, safest bank for 16 years. Those are the things that I caught, and that’s not really the typical profile you would expect of an institution that’s making an early foray into digital assets. So what prompted DBS to start this? Can you walk us through that journey?
Evy
A couple of things happened in 2020 and it got us thinking before 2020 but a couple of things happened in 2020 were really a catalyst for us. First thing that happened was the PSA Act came into place in Singapore. So the MAS came out with a licensing regime, which was a big step back in 2020 to have a major regulator to come out with regulations around digital assets. So that was one of the drivers. And we also believed that the financial services industry was looking and possibly looking to be tokenized, and we wanted to be part of that. So we really believed in blockchain tokenization, and we wanted to have hands on experience and be part of that. At the same time, we also saw our private banking customers had a lot more interest in investing in digital assets. Directly, but they were looking for a Counterparty which was safe, secure, and that they could trust. And so with that, we started by launching our own exchange, D, Dex and custody, custody held by the bank, DBS bank, so not a separate subsidiary, but really embedded within the bank system, which where we were from a tier one bank, point of view for a long time, the only bank that offered that so quite future forward, and that’s gone really well for us at the same time, we also looked at banking, because many of those that were getting their licenses, they needed bank accounts. So we looked at banking digital asset natives, and that started in 2022 when I came in in 2022 we were banking some of those natives. It was done in a very fragmented way, and I really looked at how we could look at the segment in a more strategic way, and also partner the industry more closely to make sure that people were building their businesses in a responsible manner, an innovation forward manner, and that we were a part of that story, and we were able to help them with that.
Chengyi
That’s really interesting. So banking, crypto, native, web, three native players. How did you find that to be different from banking, any other customer segment?
Evy
There are many differences and many commonalities. Let me speak most on the differences. One thing which is very different between other segments in for example, the financial institutions group, is that it’s a very community driven industry. There are many linkages between different companies. There is a lot of Counterparty overlap, there is a lot of collaboration. And it did take me a bit of time to understand how all of it worked. Also, many of the companies from the surface level seem like they do the same thing, but when you understand them better, actually operate quite differently. For example, an OTC desk a is not the same thing as an OTC desk B as an OTC desk C, and you really need to have in depth knowledge to understand how they operate, where risks are, where their business opportunities are, and where their priorities are. And so we spend a lot of time understanding that, and through that, we could identify better who we should be working with, what we should be looking out for, where we should let them know that they should work on a bit more. So we spend a lot of time on that, and I think that’s been very helpful for us in that period.
Chengyi
So do you really see DBS as a partner to the crypto ecosystem helping?
Evy
That’s the way I approached it. That’s the way I approached it. I wanted to partner them when we built out the business and and I think that we’ve done that well. I mean,
Chengyi
I mean, I can imagine that it takes a good deal of investment to get right down into the weeds of the business model, the technical specificities, how risks manifest. All that takes a good deal of investment and against the backdrop of obviously, quite a volatile space. So how challenging was it to continue to pursue this digital asset strategy, particularly, again, through the upheaval of 2022
Evy
I have to give a lot of credit to all those that came before me, because when I came in, our legal and compliance teams, our COO teams, our teams within the exchange custody, they were very well versed already in digital assets, in the technicalities of digital assets on chain screening, looking at the way we could customize assets in the most safe way possible. For example, we were 100% cold storage. Many of these aspects were looked at early on, and we didn’t really see a need to stop that. We felt that continuing that trajectory of learning understanding and deepening that understanding was the right way to go, and that shows now when you look at all of the things that we’ve done, we’ve got our exchange custody, as I said, we’ve got structured products as well on the back of Bitcoin and Ethereum, but also on the ETFs. We have a lot of initiatives within the payment space that we’ve been launching, and then we’ve got the banking space, where we bank now most of the license holders in Singapore, and we support a lot of other companies within the Digital Asset space as well.
Chengyi
So one thing that I’m curious about you mentioned several different verticals. Of course, banking, web, three businesses providing access to digital assets as an asset class for your high net worth customers, looking at tokenizing financial products. Are these, each sort of initiatives that emerged organically, or was this the result, like of a top down strategy? Was there a move to sit down and map out the ecosystem and say, These are the plays that we’re going to place bets on within a you know, risk management framework, and we’re going to go for all of this at once,
Evy
it was definitely top down, driven a lot of discussion at group management, committee level and even at board level, to look at where we should put our focus and attention to within digital assets and the rest followed. So you. Was strong involvement from the top. Actually, my role becoming head of digital assets for the institutional bank was discussed between my old boss and Piyush before I came on to this role. So there was definitely a lot of attention, and there still is. We continue to update our group management committee on a very regular basis and the board on a yearly basis on what we are doing within digital assets, what our strategy is, where we think we should go. So that has helped tremendously, and that helped a lot in the early days as well in 2023 being able to have direct access to the head of legal and compliance. So the CEO of Singapore and our head of institutional bank really helped to navigate through some of the more complex matters of doing digital assets within a bank. I
Chengyi
think that’s super interesting, especially as we start to see more and more banks sink through their digital asset strategy. And it’s clear that DBS was there early. So besides this senior and board level drive, what are some of the other key factors do you think that got DBS to where it is today in the digital asset ecosystem, the
Evy
general culture of DBS is very purpose driven and is very innovation forward. And you can really feel that when you work with people, and that sense of purpose doesn’t go away when there is a downturn. When I started in the role, I started this chat group internally called crypto at dBs, we’re all gonna make it. Wag me. We’re all gonna make it. And this group has continued to grow. It was basically filled with people who all were enthusiastic about crypto and digital assets and who wanted to work in it, and whether you were a developer, you were on the product side, whether you were in legal and compliance, whether wherever you were, whatever community within, within dBs, and I’m quite proud of this chat group, because you really have all levels and all parts of the bank in that group. But it also shows that we continue to work on this. Wanted to continue to work on this, and have that sense of purpose, and felt that innovation was important. I also believe that that is what brought us where we are today. We are well versed as a practically bilingual some of us understanding the digital asset space very well, and at the same time, understanding traditional finance very well, and being able to cross those two domains is very helpful to us now, and I think that was all worth it. All of the difficulty that we’ve all gone through, doing change within a bank was very rewarding, and we had a lot of support, and it was definitely worth
Chengyi
- I love that you you talked about this concept of being bilingual in finance and in digital assets, because sometimes it does feel like we’re talking different languages at the core, a lot of the concepts are the same, but we have different ways of thinking about them and talking about them. And of course, there is this thesis around, you know, the broader adoption of blockchain based infrastructure and financial products. And if we are to get to that point, you would need people that are conversant in both the digital asset space and in traditional finance. So that’s very key. And of course, you know, the narrative around, is blockchain going to be part of the next generation of financial infrastructure? That narrative has sort of swung back and forth over the past decade, a bit, I think, from your perspective, how do you see the role of traditional banking evolving in the digital age? Do you think that we will see all financial products ending up on chain?
Evy
we definitely see there is a time of convergence coming from a technology point of view. For example, we recently launched a DBS Treasury token where we’re really, really looking at the way payments work, and the way we think about cross border payments, internal liquidity management, even the way that we look at domestic capabilities that blockchain enables. We launched, recently the rewards program on our payla app, Blockchain powered. So we really think that where it makes sense, this is a very good technology to use. And thanks to a lot of the initiatives which happened very early on, led by the MAS project, Guardian project, ORCID project, Ubin, you had a lot of initiatives that were led by the MES, we’ve actually learned a lot about how we can use this technology, and as you can see acceleration right now, through all those learnings, I think we can really benefit from that and make an impact pretty quickly. So we’re very well set for what is coming. Also, we’ve continued to work on tokenization. As I said in the beginning, we thought that tokenization was going to be the change in financial markets. It didn’t happen. Didn’t happen at the speed that we thought it was going to happen. So now we’re more than five years further, but we are still working on tokenization, and maybe from a very different lens. So I think you will see us do some things there too in the future, but that as well, and there as well. We continue to work on it and are very ready to move
Chengyi
forward. I mean, the thing that always comes up when we have these conversations about the next generation of financial market products and the role that digital assets will play in that it’s the end vision. You can just about make it out. But the question is, sort of, how do we get there? And as you pointed out, there are segue. It’s where there seems to be a clear use case, but the ecosystem has not moved or developed at the speed that we had thought that it would. What do you think are some of those key components that need to be in place in order for us to achieve that vision? And what are some of the concrete steps or the milestones that you’re looking to to get us there?
Evy
An important part is, indeed, the tech, but I think even more importantly is regulatory clarity. And with what’s been happening in the US and in Europe and in Asia, a lot more regulatory clarity is coming, which is a key enabler. Financial markets are global. They are not isolated. So in order to make shifts in those markets, you really need global regulation and clarity, which a lot of work has been done on that, and that continues to be done. So very important and very positive to see that progress on the technology side, technology has come a long way as well, and I think not that hard. In the very beginning, what I did was everybody was telling me, it’s so difficult and it’s so hard. So as I said, I studied computer science, so I went to one of the coders, and I said, can you just show it to me, like you show me how hard it really is? And so she did, and it’s it’s okay, it’s doable, it’s okay. And I think that shows it’s doable. You can work on it. So I don’t think that’s the biggest hurdle anymore. I think regulatory clarity and technology are well underway. The last point, I would say, is collaboration in order to make a big shift in complex processes. Many people speak, for example, about trade finance. There are so many actors and stakeholders within that when you have to bring so many different people together, that’s not easy, but there are probably other areas that are much more ripe for disruption What are some of those? Do you think? I think what you can see right now is the rise of the stable coins, and the usage of stable coins, which enables 24/7, it’s a key enabler. And at the same time, tokenized deposits, which do not only enable 24/7 but at the same time also enable programmability within banks, which I think is very positive. The second piece would be the tokenization of money market funds, as we are all aware of, and that’s been very successful for the trading use cases within digital assets, serve as collateral for stable coins, but also serve as collateral when trading happens. Those are the first very green shoots that you can see in changing the way that we think about how money moves and how we look at liquidity within markets and first products being tokenized with very real use cases, very effectively used well, those
Chengyi
are, those are foundational components as well, right? So it’s almost like you can start by tackling, I hesitate to call it lower hanging fruit, but at least the parts where you where a single institution or a smaller group of stakeholders can drive progress forward, and that creates the foundation for more complex orchestration, which you would require. I think modernizing and streamlining trade finance is something that we’ve all been trying to do for decades now. So I would imagine that that’s always going to be a tough nut to crack, no matter what.
Evy
For sure, yes, more complex one, we don’t know. I mean, there’s we have time. It’s okay.
Chengyi
So coming back from blockchain as infrastructure to digital assets as an asset class. Obviously, we’re in a very different environment now from 2022 there’s been market swings, as you said, you know, a lot of movement in the United States, which is spilling over into, I think, a degree of ebullience and sort of mainstream attention from rising Bitcoin prices for one so I’m curious, like, when we think about DBS and your offerings to investors. Have you seen that reflected in your crypto brokerage business?
Evy
Definitely, definitely, when you see markets move market volatility, you see a lot more uptake everywhere. But also for us, we’re the third largest private bank in Asia, excluding China. So you can imagine how many of the Asian high net worth and ultra high net worth have access to dBs, and we can can definitely see that the interest is there. When the markets are volatile and even just continue on a continuous basis, you see that the interest is there. There is a concept of allocating at least part of your portfolio to digital assets, which we see investors do. I would like to preface though, that crypto is not for everybody. It’s highly volatile. And whenever you buy crypto through our DBS app, you will see that notification on top that you do need to be mindful that this is a very volatile asset, and you should take that into account when taking any investment
Chengyi
decisions. So I can imagine that there is a lot of interest in Bitcoin and other digital assets as an investment product. It makes total sense. What you’ve been saying about asset allocation so far, I think the offerings, as far as the crypto brokerage business are concerned, they’ve been quite focused on Singapore and the Singapore population. Of course, that makes. Sense, because there’s a lot of high net worth individuals that are based here and they’re investing through Singapore. But given that DBS is a regional bank, is there any consideration to broadening out those services to the rest of the clientele in the region?
Evy
Yes, we look at that actively, not just for D decks, but more in general, for example, on the structured product side, on the banking side, we look at, what can we do it in other markets where regulation allows? We’ve looked at Hong Kong quite actively. We are now also offering banking services in Hong Kong, from an exchange point of view as well. We look at what we can do locally in Hong Kong, but also in other jurisdictions. So that is definitely something that we’ve been exploring. Structured Products. We don’t only offer it to our own clients, but we also offer it to anybody who distributes our notes, for example. So we have expanded our reach through that, and that’s been very successful too. I would say it’s not limited to Singapore alone. We have started to expand, and I think you will continue to see
Chengyi
that that’s great. Just to shift gears a little bit. One thing that I’ve heard you say so many times so far in our conversation is the word regulation. You’ve talked about how the regulatory landscape is evolving. We’re seeing that regulatory clarity come into focus or crystallize in more and more jurisdictions around the world. And as this happens. We’re hearing a lot of talk about mica in the EU, about the momentum in Hong Kong, of course, about Dubai and so on. So amidst all of that, do you think, based on your experiences with the ecosystem, does Singapore remain attractive as a base for crypto and web three businesses, or are you seeing interest gravitate elsewhere?
Evy
The mas in Singapore was very early in putting out its first regulation. So there’s definitely a lot of knowledge and experience within Singapore regulator around digital assets, which I think is fantastic and very positive. They also been very collaborative with the industry through consultation papers, through dialog, to listen and be open to feedback and adjust where they felt was needed. After hearing the industry out and reviewing what can be done, I would see Singapore still being a very strong regulator and a very strong jurisdiction to operate from, and you can see that through the presence here. There are a lot of digital asset firms that are still based out of Singapore, operating out of Singapore, running their businesses from here. So I think that’s testament to what has been done. Singapore is the only Asian AAA rated country as well. So it’s a very good location to be in. And there is still a lot, and there has been, and there continues to be a lot of innovation coming from Asia. And so Singapore is a perfect place to do that from. And I think it’s important to be part of this part of the world and be part of this action and this drive and dynamic. That’s what brought me to Singapore, the drive dynamic, the positive mindset, the growth mindset, and I think that’s still a very good place to be for digital asset companies. So
Chengyi
we’ve obviously got a very innovation forward, central bank and regulator here in Singapore, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, mas. And you’ve mentioned earlier that they’ve driven a lot of projects like Project Ubin, Project orchid, Project Guardian, and these are, of course, of a more institutional nature. They’re looking at how you can use smart contracts to automate certain types of financial services and streamline everything make it more efficient. Do you think that these types of initiatives have a positive spillover in terms of making Singapore an attractive place for crypto native and web three businesses to anchor and to grow? Or do you see those initiatives as being like fairly distinct from crypto trading, web three, gaming and all of those types of use cases that are also growing at the same time.
Evy
I feel it’s absolutely helpful. It’s been very helpful, and it will continue to be. There are certain parts of the digital asset industry that might not converge with that, but you definitely see a convergence coming, right as we spoke about before, between traditional finance and what was traditionally done only by the natives, by the digital asset natives. So when you see that conversions, having gone through these projects, understanding them is very useful, I’ll give you an example. We did a pilot between UBS SBI and ourselves on a repo transaction. I believe it was two years ago. It was a technical proof of concept. Does this work? How does this work? Based on current regulations, what works? Well, what are inhibitors? What do we see this could bring to us as financial services today, we have to think about, Okay, do we start doing repos on the back of tokenized money market funds as an example? Thanks to such initiatives, you have people within the bank that have a lot better sense of what does it mean to do a repo on the back of a tokenized fund or a tokenized bond, as we did then. That knowledge is very valuable. It taught us a lot, and it will help us going forward. So as you see more conversions, there are many examples of that programmable money has come from ORCID a. So what we’ve done on payout with the rewards has come from that too. So a lot of those initiatives were actually the foundation, the base for things that we’ve now been able to launch, but in a commercial way. So now we’re looking at commercial use cases. What makes sense for us as a bank, to do, but that was a big factor in learning.
Chengyi
That’s a great way to think about it, these sorts of projects as a way to encourage or to catalyze learning by doing and then thereby helping to build, I guess, the institutional muscle in order to be able to tackle other challenges that have direct commercial applicability. Just to play on that concept of sort of growth, learning and so on in your work, banking, digital asset natives, have you seen over the past few years any change in their profile, any change in their products or business models, or in, you know, in the way that they organize themselves? Yes, in
Evy
the way that they organize themselves has been aligned a lot more to the way that traditionally, companies are organized. You definitely have seen a shift from tech focus to more balanced focus governance and controls have strengthened. A lot said. In another place, boys have become men, I find that a lot of the industry leaders have become have really matured in a way that they look at their businesses, taken on a lot of advice from outside, and really have strengthened their businesses that way. And I feel that the industry can be very proud of that, and you can really see markable shifts when you work with companies. Of course, you’re always going to see the other side as well and different aspects, but we’ve been working with those that really want to act responsibly and still want to push innovation and want to drive that forward. I think that’s been very good to see over the past couple of years.
Chengyi
What do you think has driven that is that regulation primarily, is it active stakeholders like yourselves? Is there something else? All
Evy
of the above, regulatory clarity has driven it. Some of the Wake Up Calls that had happened over the past years definitely drove that as well. But also businesses have become of a very decent size. So the way you run a very small startup versus you run a large company is different. So you can definitely see that too. And then, whereas maybe five, six years ago, it might have been quite hard to hire very experienced people from traditional businesses into your crypto startup. Today, you see a lot more with a traditional finance and traditional industry people join digital asset native companies as well. So you get the chance then as a digital asset native to get that experience in house and build for your next leap, for your next generation. So a lot has changed over time, and they’ve been enabled in that way too.
Chengyi
So of course, it’s very heartening to hear you talk about how the crypto sector is is maturing. So if the digital asset sector were human, where would we be in terms of stages of development. You know, clearly we’re past the infancy of the sector. Are we now in our teens? Are we fully grown adult near retirement? What do you think
Evy
I would say we are early 20s? Definitely no longer teens, I think, grown a bit more responsible, but still a lifetime ahead of us. Still a lot of energy, new ideas, still a lot of potential for the industry. So early 20s, that’s what I’m going to go
Chengyi
with. Well, directionally, that’s great. I just want to come back now again, to DBS. And DBS is a strategy with regards to digital assets. Obviously, DBS is not the only institution that is actively exploring digital assets. It’s one of the early ones in the space. So far, when we talk about tradfi and digital assets and the convergence between the two, we focus a lot on stable coin issuance and then obviously RWA tokenization and the structured products that DBS has already been playing in. Looking ahead, is there a particular avenue that you feel DBS is best positioned to pursue now and into the future.
Evy
Right now, I don’t see us changing path drastically because we’re covering already so many aspects of the space. We cover trading, we cover payments and broader cash management and trade, and we cover banking. So I think we’re well covered in the way that we look at the space. What you will see us do is continue to double down on those areas, especially those where it makes most sense right now, from both a state of the industry, but also from a commercial point of view, we will continue to grow in all of our different segments. We will continue to double down on trading, on the way payments are looked at and payment innovation, but also on the tokenization of financial markets. I think you’ll see a few things come out there in the coming months. Anything you’d like to tease already say, stay tuned. Stay tuned. Coming soon. Akan data.
Chengyi
Akan data, fair enough. So what’s the best way. Our listeners to continue to stay up to date and to be informed when these new releases
Evy
come out. I’ll focus on on our DBS channels. You can find us on our socials, and if you want to follow me, you can follow me on LinkedIn. Whenever there’s something new and exciting, I’ll post
Chengyi
it there. I can see you getting a surge in connection requests now, that would be nice. Thank you so much, Evy for taking the time to speak to me today. This has been a fascinating conversation, so many insights that I think will be very useful to all of us that are observing the intersection of tradfi and crypto, and all the banks that are also moving actively into the space. Thank you again.
Evy
Thank you for having me.